Patients encouraged to “follow-up” post prostate screening

Nearly 600 Nevisian and Kittitian men turned up Saturday (January 13) for the 11th annual free prostate screen at Occasions at Pinney and they were reminded that follow-up screening are crucial.

Founder of the event Doctor Dwayne Thwaites with his team including Dr. Brian Cohen and Dr. Daniel Caruso along with a nurse from the Alexander Hospital performed the screenings on 588 men, 10 more than last year.

“The Observer” was informed that the results will goven in two weeks. Patients will be called or will be contacted by mail. Persons with abnormalities will be called first.

Dr. Cohen noted the importance for the men to get their results and following-up if any abnormalities were found.

“Follow-up is key. My advice to you is to make sure you get your results. If you are going to go through all the trouble of turning up, going through the exam, going through the brief discomfort, make sure you get your results,” he said.

The Doctor said that after they identify abnormalities, whether it’s with the prostate exam or PSA blood test, the patients are typically contacted and a given follow up with doctor Thwaites . The next step is usually a prostate biopsy to look for prostate cancer.

Dr .Thwaites pointed out the importance of having both the Prostate specific antigen PSA, and the recital examination done.

“Some people like to hedge and say I don’t want the rectal exam ,I just want the blood draw. I think if you want to have a good comprehensive solid screening both of them are necessary. When you look at the data that is out there the PSA is a little bit more sensitive than the rectal examination, but you still need to go ahead and get the recital examination. With the combination of the two, it is very difficult for us to miss something. If you just do one it would make it harder,” he said.

Thwaites said that “on a whole, we are doing very well with the percentages of abnormalities and the percentage of cancer victims has decreased considerable over the last 10 years that we have been doing this”

In 2017, 578 men were screened. An abnormality rate of 12.41% was detected with Cancer detection rate of 1.90%.” Next stop for Dr. Thwaites and his team will be St. Kitts in July and Antigua in August where they will offer the same service.